How did your lopsided math/science student do in admissions?

busdriver11
Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:35:11 +0000

You never know, liny, your son might take the SAT a few extra times, you never know. I hadn’t expected my kid to do it 5 times (plus 3 times for subject tests), as he’s not the type to enjoy tests. But the first time, after a Kaplan prep course, and all those years of really great private schools, he got a high math score, and CR/W each under 500. I was banging my head on the wall, thinking, can you get into any school with these? I think he was going too slow and not finishing up, he just didn’t have any idea of timing, and all the answers sounded right to him. But each time he improved 50-100 points overall in the superscore. Finally, we promised him a new laptop if he could get over 2000 total. He did that and then some,so we got him the laptop (that we were going to get him anyways for college, heh, heh) but he did get a nice gaming computer that we probably wouldn’t have gotten him. The bribe worked perfectly, and he ended up accepted/waitlisted to places where he shouldn’t have had a shot. No high GPA.

I normally wouldn’t recommend anyone taking that stupid test so many times, but ridiculously, so much rides on it sometimes.